How to Restore a Deleted Google Analytics Account

If you’ve found yourself here in a panic after deleting your google analytics account, you’ve come to the right place. I’m sure you’re probably anxious to find out what steps need to be taken to restore your account, and we’ll get to that shortly. But first, I’d like to share my own experience and how I came about this information.

About a week ago I decided to sign in to my analytics account and noticed that one of my client’s accounts had been assigned to my list of personal accounts. This was a first for me because up to this point the only analytics accounts I have ever been in charge of have been my own. I tried to think as to how this account found its way into my list of accounts and remembered that a few weeks earlier I had installed a google analytics plugin on my client’s wordpress site. The client had assigned my name to their account and had given me admin privileges in order to authenticate their account through the plugin.

Fair enough. But being the OCD wonder that I am and also assuming that my client would probably not want me having access to their sensitive analytics data, I decided to remove the account from my list. All I’d have to do is delete it from my account and since they are the owner’s of the account, they would be free to manage their account as they see fit. It only makes sense right? WRONG.

Well, yes and no. Ethically speaking, yes. But deleting a client’s account from your list of personal accounts is not the proper way of removing the account from the list. So how is it done? In order to have that account removed from the list, YOU MUST CONTACT THE CLIENT AND REQUEST THAT THEY REMOVE YOUR ADMIN PRIVILEGES FROM THAT ACCOUNT.

Unfortunately for me, this was something I had to learn the hard way. Because I chose to delete the account, which in turn not only deleted the account from my list, but also deleted the account from my client’s analytics profile as well. And as you’ve probably guessed, once the account is deleted, it’s gone. Forever. Or is it?

Well, if you did your panic stricken run through the google analytics forum and read helplessly through the sea of deleted analytics account threads as I did, you probably already know that there is absolutely NOTHING reassuring about deleting an analytics account. And sorry to break your heart, but writing to Analyticspro.Anna on that support forum isn’t going to help you one bit. So what’s the solution?

It’s very simple really. Call Google support. Their number is (866) 246-6453 and their office hours are 9am to 8pm EST. You’ll want to have a few things on hand including your analytics tracking code (UA-XXXXXXXX), the name of the web site your tracking code was assigned to, as well as your Ad Words Customer ID. If you did not have an Ad Words account at the time your analytics account was deleted, don’t worry. Just sign up for one as this will be the first piece of information the Google support rep will ask for and is essential in retrieving your deleted account.

The Google rep will probably tell you something along the lines of “There is no guarantee that we can restore your deleted account, but we will be in touch with you shortly”. Again, don’t worry. You’ll receive an email soon after that looks something like this:

Hello Joel,

Thank you for calling Google.

I spoke with some Analytics specialists who explained we can recover accounts which have been deleted up until 14 days have passed. That being said, we should be able to recover this for you.

I’m happy to assist you with recovering the Analytics from your Client’s Google account. Since you are currently an admin for him, I will need you to authorize me to make changes to your account. We require a letter of authorization in a specific format. I’ve given you a sample email message below. Please reply to this email in the format of the example.

————————————
I authorize Google to modify my Google Analytics in the following way(s):

To which you should reply:

I authorize Google to modify my Google AdWords account in the following way(s):

And that’s it. It took roughly 24 hours to restore the account but at the end of the day, my client’s account was restored and I only suffered a mild cardiac episode which is a fair trade if you ask me.

87 Comments

It is sad, isn’t it? I was just amazed at the lack of information available. There is so much more misinformation than there is actually valid advice on how to restore and analytics account. You’d figure Google would have either streamlined the process to help users avoid accidents like this or at the very least make it easier to restore an account.

Unfortunately, this method is no longer working. I called and entered customer ID and then # and was disconnected 4 times. I finally got to speak to an ad sense sales person who forwarded me to another general Google customer service number and was told that they no longer provide customer support. Still desperately trying to recover lost analytics data when account got deleted by accident. Any other help?

Sorry to hear you didn’t have any luck. Not sure if there have been any changes made to the way Google treats the process of restoring deleted analytics accounts since I had my clients account restored. My suggestion would be to try again. Sometimes it isn’t so much the process as it is who you talk to. I can only imagine the quantity of calls Google customer service receive on a daily basis. I was fortunate enough to speak to a very helpful Google rep so it may just have been a run of bad luck. If you have any luck trying again, please let me know.

I contacted one of the Certified Google Analytics Partners http://www.google.com/analytics/partners/index.html who was kind enough to send a message directly to the Google Analytics Team for me and they restored everything in 15 mins flat. I lucked out I guess, I feel for the tons of frustrated people still waiting for an answer and getting more and more freaked out. Still waiting to see if I will be billed for this by GA Partner, but to recover the data, I don’t care. In the end even if they charge a small fee Google should provide this as a service just to be “good guys”…

I personally think Google should streamline the process of managing analytics accounts. Right now its just too simple to accidentally delete and account and incredibly cumbersome to restore it. Think about how many man hours could be saved if a “fail safe” system were set up where users could restore their own accounts up to 90 days (or more) from the time they were deleted. I mean if Google can map an entire planet, I honestly don’t think something like this is too difficult to do or ask for. Glad everything worked out, Cindy.

CINDY,
Thank you so much for this suggestion – it has saved my butt!
It seemed like the only logical way, amidst all the other dead-end ways, and after having approached my nearest local certified GA partner my request is being submitted.
I would seriously encourage everyone with this kind of problem to follow your method.
You ROCK!
And thank you one more time 🙂

I just got an email today that a clients’ Google Analytics account was deleted and after having a heart attack, searched the web for tips. I called the number above and got a representative within a couple of minutes. He asked me for a few pieces of information then restored the Google Analytics account while I was waiting on hold. The whole process took about 10 minutes. I couldn’t be more satisfied with the level of support… simply amazing.

Thank you for posting this information. You’ve saved me a lot of time and anguish. I was able to talk to a rep at the number you listed who brought back my Analytics acct. Unfortunately my Google Adwords may have to be recreated but there wasn’t a whole lot of money there.

Joel,
A rogue seo did this to our account as well. Thanks a million for this advice. I called and they are looking into it for me. Contrary to popular opinion, the Google rep was super helpful. Fingers crossed that my account can be restored. BTW, love the amp-look of your site!

Thanks so much for this post! Clearly it is too easy too accidentally delete a Google Analytics user account. I can see how it seems that you are just deleting a profile from your list, not expecting the whole account to go. This is exactly what an employee from our former web agency has done.

Just called the number you quoted in the US and I was forwarded by the Google Adwords support as he wasn’t qualified on Analytics. The second guy I spoke to was VERY helpful and after running through some security questions, he said they would “most probably be able to restore the account within an indeterminate number of business days”. He said the graph would be flatlined over the days since the account was “deleted”, but that all previous analytics would be restored.

Hi Richard, glad I could I help! Restoring it should be fairly quick, normally around 24 to 48 hours. Missing a few days of data, while not ideal, is a decent trade off compared to missing several months or even years. While Google definitely seems proactive in helping customers restore their deleted analytic accounts, posting about your experience will hopefully help make it clear that the process for deleting and restoring analytic accounts can and should improve.

Thanks for posting this, Joel. I was cleaning out accounts from my list, most of which were for websites that no longer exist. Unfortunately, one of them belonged to a former client who built a new website over a year ago but was still using the same analytics account. In my spring-cleaning zeal I deleted that one, too. I got a nasty note from the former client, but at least she was good enough to provide me a link to this page. I called Google and they will have it back up within 24 hours. Thanks so much for posting this information – a real heart-attack saver, for sure!

You just save my job!!! Good blase you.
I work for a company with 150 profiles, I try to delete a profile, but instead I delete the all account. I was panic, cause for me it’s mean I go home, but you save me. the Google team did it in 24 hours and I can now smile again.

I had a contractor do this (accidentally delete) three of my client accounts. The contractor is a friend of mine but I still want to kill her. 🙂

I called the number, spoke to a rep and provided them with the tracking ID’s of the deleted accounts as well as an admin email for those accounts. Today, I had have yet to receive a reply and still do not see my accounts. I called back. They are now telling me that it takes several WEEKS to re instate the accounts. Ugh.

Not ideal but as long as I can get the data back ……. Guess you early birds got lucky with your turn around times.

Sorry to hear about that. Out of curiosity, how long has it been since you placed the call? My guess is it wont take several weeks and I would be surprised if it takes longer than a few days. Hang in there. – J

Just wanted to say thanks for this post. It helped me a lot when I was in the same situation. I felt totally hopeless at first when reading google forums, but thankfully people like you also take the time to post their experiences. I deleted a former client’s account instead of just removing myself from it, but when I rang the AdWords team they had it back within the day, about 8 hours. So thanks a lot for sharing and caring!

Thank you so much. This post saved me so much aggravation. I got an email today from the big G saying my account had been deleted. Seems a former VA with admin access had her account hacked and they deleted accounts. I thought I’d removed her from all my G accounts but somehow I missed my main account. DOH! It’s all on its way to being fixed now and only took one hour. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

What a relief this post is! I had the hardest time getting through to anyone without an AdWords account number. I ended up using one that was not connected to the Analytics account I deleted and that got me to someone who helped. Phew! Thanks. I suggest if you don’t have an AdWords account, you get one before you call 🙂

Thank you so much for this post! I’m a seasoned user, and I was trying to delete a sub account, and I deleted the entire thing! Google Customer service was impeccable, responsive, and really really fast with sending what I needed. The disclaimer they gave said it could take up to 14 days, but the rep emailed and said it should be completed END OF DAY! Good job Google.

Completely understand where you’re coming from… its the reason why I set this post up! Why Google has not set some sort of documented process in order to retrieve deleted analytics accounts is beyond me but the whole point of making this post is to save others the trouble and stress I (and others) have gone through in order to rectify the matter. Google is a great company and they really provide some amazing products (analytics for starters), so as long as what I’ve posted can help others, makes things all worthwhile. I’m glad everything worked out and thank you so much for your post. Cheers! – J

I did the same terrible mistake 🙁 I deleted a useless account and lost one very important too.
Then I called to the support center in my country and after a couple of hours they wanted me to confirm by the administrative email that I am the owner of the account and have deleted it by accident.
After half an hour my account was recovered, but when I opened it, I found that it is EMPTY! All the information is missing!
It is hopeless! The girl from the support center told me that there is nothing to do to get the data back!

Joel, thank you so much for this – I will be even more grateful if it actually works!!

I took your advice and immediately contacted Google (am in the UK and it took several attempts to find the right number but it seems to be 0800 169 0409). Spoke to a very helpful guy several times on Friday who is “trying to get a response from the Technical team” but it still hasn’t been fixed. Am trying very hard not to panic (after my initial melt down when I realised what I had done) as everyone else seems to have had their records reinstalled a lot quicker than the 5 days it has now taken. PLEASE reassure me that everything will be OK… still feel sick about it!

Update on my previous post – it took almost a week to fix so lost a valuable 7 days worth of data but SO much better than the alternative! I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to post this extremely helpful advice.

It was also very reassuring in the midst of the heart stopping panic to realise that there were lots of other intelligent and savvy people who had suffered the same fate. I still can’t believe it was so easy to do.

I deleted an old client’s account to make room for another account, not realising that it deletes ALL the data and ALL the access for everyone else! Needless to say the client was not impressed.

I’m in New Zealand and I initially tried the NZ AdWords sales number with no success, but clicked through onto my AdWords account and selected the Live Chat option. Boom! Within 10 minutes of chatting to someone (in India) had my account access restored and within a few hours got all the historical data back too! Sweet as!

Thanks for your post and I hope this information saves other unfortunate souls.

You gave me hope. But I called several local GA partners, to no avail. They might help a client, but not me (even though I would be willing to pay), and they do not know whether what I’m asking is possible and how they would go about it.
However, I sent a request to AdWords support, and I should get a reply from them within 24h. I’ll let you know whether the reply was positive.

Since I was not an AdWords customer I was not given options when I called that number. Once I got someone from Google on the phone they referred me to one of their Google Analytics Certified Partners (e-nor.com). When I called they said they cannot fix it so they’re not sure why Google continues to refer people their way BUT he had posted a blog on how to fix it http://www.e-nor.com/blog/google-analytics/google-analytics-account-deleted-or-lost-access. Bascially I realized that I just needed to sign up for an AdWords account AND THEN Google would help me fix it. And they did. It seems a bit ridiculous but its fixed now.

Your blog post was among the top responses when I searched how to restore deleted Analytics account. Pretty much the same scenario happened here today and it my data is back 1/2 hour after reading your page!

Really hoping this works. Will call them first thing on Monday morning. Deleted the view after reading some bad advice on a website. My tracking hasn’t been working since I done a complete update so was trying to revert back to classing tracking code…

Hi Joel. I’ve never written a comment before on an article but your post changed this. An old contractor deleted some of our analytics profiles (on accident). I found your post, which is by far the most helpful post on retrieving deleted accounts… in fact on getting a live person at Google, period. I called the phone number, entered our google ad customer number, choose Analytics when prompted and within 30 seconds was transferred to an actual person who helped us get our profiles back. Thank you soo soo much. I too could kiss you!

Oh my oh my, thank you so much for posting this. I ended up calling the Irish AdWords support and they had me fully restored within about 30 minutes.

In our foolish youth we had added multiple different websites to a single GA Account, instead of setting up individual accounts for each one. As a result we had about 15 client websites in the account I mistakenly deleted.

I nearly had a heart attack but your post totally calmed me down and then AdWords support sorted it all.

I believe had I not linked my AdWords account to this GA Account, then it may not have been possible via AdWords support, and I would have needed to contact a Google Analytics Certified Partner to get them on the case.

I can back Zane up on his recent comment — Joel’s advice still works almost 2.5 years later! You’ll need to have an AdWords account, but with that in hand, a Google support rep was able to restore my deleted Analytics property in about 10 minutes via chat. Just click the gear icon at top right in your AdWords Dashboard view, select Chat, and choose “Google Analytics” as the issue category. In my case, a (well intentioned) colleague was trying to remove the property from his own Analytics Dashboard, and didn’t realize he was deleting the Property entirely. All fixed now — thanks Joel!

I have a different slant to the above problem and accidentally deleted the email address associated with the analytics account. I have checked in several google searches and the ads are still running, I just can’t access the account. I’m wondering if I just re-create the email address, will that automatically be associated, once again, with the account, or will it overwrite and delete everything? Talk about stress!!